The Doctor Lies
by Vilinye
Summary: The Doctor lies about many things. But there are some things he doesn't lie about-because he never mentions them. 100 drabbles about the Time War. Maybe he's telling the truth, maybe not...
1. Same

I've seen hundreds of wars across the universe: Sontarans, Germans, Daleks. Agonizing screams, empty corpses, despair. It doesn't matter if it's fought with rocks or rays—death is still the result. Children wailing, grown men screaming, armies marching. No matter what the weather is, it seems dark and overcast; it must be dark, for how else could the sky feel on such a dreadful day? My hearts pound against my chest, but only a little faster than usual—I have seen so many wars, fought so many battles, that death is expected. They're all the same. All the same…

Right?


	2. Arcadia

He'll never forget the fall of Acadia. It was their fault, after all—the Time Lords chose it as a trap, but the iron jaws were lethal to more than just Daleks. Someday, he might come to terms with it— blood draining into the streets, limbs lying like scraps of raw iron, and the unending cycle of death.

The war hung over everything—it could be tasted, felt, smelt, as well as seen and heard. Every time he returned to the TARDIS, he would grab a new set of clothes, trying to escape the omnipresent suffocation of a dying world.


	3. Renegade

They had asked if he would lead the attack, offering him a position of command. Would he never be more than their errand boy, sent to do their grunt work so their ridiculous robes wouldn't be soiled by the breath of other species? "Renegades, for all the Capitol's disdain, were really useful beings in the end, weren't they?"

The Capitol needed him again. He didn't need them, but he was the Doctor. They were the Daleks. His mortal enemies. It was no use trying to guess who started it. But the Council offered him this chance to end it. Forever.


	4. Commander

He accepted. Took his own companions home first, but he accepted the commission. No less than a dozen Time Lords took up residence in the normally empty halls. Certain rooms remained off-limits, but he didn't offer any explanations. They didn't deserve any. Their way with the TARDIS always made him cringe.

It was a living, aware ship. Not just some bolts and dials to be controlled. Why, they even offered to fix the Chameleon Circuit. The cheek! That offer came from a student just out of the Academy, but they all were loud. Yet, he still misses it sometimes. Sometimes.


	5. Alone

He wouldn't let anyone into his TARDIS. The Doctor told himself he was merely maintaining a diplomatic distance, protecting himself in case something went wrong. He didn't want to put anyone else into danger with him. He worked best alone, that's all. After so many years on the run—even as Lord President—he found it difficult to take orders from anyone. Giving orders was equally painful. Most of the time, they ignored him anyway.

"Stay in the TARDIS!"

"Don't wander off."

By now, he gave orders assuming disobedience. The Time Lords wouldn't have understood that.

So he fought alone.


	6. Regeneration

He regenerated alone. He regenerated in a crowd. He regenerated in the thick of battle. He regenerated in the TARDIS. He regenerated after being hit by a Dalek ray. He regenerated after the Nightmare Child drained his soul.

He could have regenerated any of those ways—or none of them. He could tell any story of his regeneration he wished—no one would stop him. There were no more Time Lords to contradict him. It seemed that was all they ever did—contradict him.

Maybe that's why he keeps lying. Just in case one of them escapes solely to argue.


	7. Dust

"Are these all the TARDISes available?"

"Yes, Lord Doctor."

"Mine may be a type-40 with a broken chameleon circuit, but at least it has plenty of experience," The Doctor ran his fingers along one's top. "How long does it take for a TARDIS to gather dust?"

"With the non-intervention policy—"

"I thought that had been reversed by President Romana." The Doctor licked his fingertips. "Lovely lady, Romana. I wanted to call her Fred."

"Quite." The man looked away. "But so many on the Council will be reluctant to break that policy after so many years."

"Well, they must now."


	8. Age

"What's your age, anyway?" Amy asks.

He doesn't answer right away.

_Age. The length of time a person or thing has existed._

What was it that American writer said—Time is the stream I go a-fishing in? Emerson, or was that Thoreau? How do you measure time when it's the sea you swim?

He lost track long before the war, but began counting again with his ninth regeneration. Started with 900—a nice, round number. He added years from there. In a way, it was his tribute to them.

_Has existed_. He survived the Time War. The others had not.


	9. Nightmare Child

The Nightmare Child had two powers—helplessness and horror. At first glance, it seemed innocent, fragile, untouched by the terror of unending battle. But if you touched it—if you looked into its eyes, it could call up every fear you ever had, every terror you ever felt, every moment of loss you'd ever suffered, and bring them to life in that moment. The emotional pain alone was enough to kill any human, but you wouldn't have the mercy of death, for the war would revive you the next day. All this, suffered at the hands of a giggling child.


	10. The Moment

The Moment. It is was will be referred to in capital letters, like many other things on Gallifrey. The Moment. The one chance to end the war forever. To escape the infinity loop, always drawing closer but never touching, without end. Should he use it?

Will Not Do Not Did Not. It would condemn everyone except the one who used it. Last. He will be is was the Last of the Time Lords. Will Do Did. Tenses are unimportant now. This Moment contains all moments for Gallifrey—past present future.

Time Locked. Can he turn the key and walk away?


	11. Like This One

He could say yes. Yes, because, at the heart of it, all wars have some things in common. Death of course, and the terrifying life that is its own slow slaughter. Yes, because it was genocide, a senseless, pointless slaughter. Yes, because Messaline is all she's ever known.

His words could say yes, but his eyes say something else, the opposite. Not "no," because "no assumes an objective standard, both sides agreeing on a word's definition and nuances. His eyes speak derision: what do you know of war? Like this? These catfights? I have seen real wars.

"Bigger. Much bigger."


	12. Of Cide

The Romans or Greeks had lot of words for murder.

Patricide, the killing of one's father

Matricide, the killing of one's mother

Fratricide, the killing of one's brother

Sororicide, the killing of one's sister

Filicide, the killing of one's child

Uxoricide, the killing of one's wife

Suicide, the killing of one's self

Homicide, the killing of a human (does it apply to Time Lords too?)

But only one word fits his actions in the Time War:

**Genocide, the killing of a large group of people, usually a single and entire race.**

Is there a word for exterminating one's own people?


	13. Fifth Quadrent

You didn't regenerate in the Time War, even though you tell everyone you did. You weren't born in battle after all—you stood just outside the closing Time Lock, listening to the screams of your people but unable to change anything.

You left, trying to drive their final screams out of your head. You wanted to be alone, because you knew you'd soon be tired of it. So you piloted the TARDIS to a quiet star in the fifth quadrant of the Andromeda Galaxy.

The velvet coat was still stained with blood; suddenly you couldn't stand yourself anymore.

You regenerated.


	14. Won't Keep It

"Are you sure you want to do this? It could destroy you."

"I know. This is the only way I can imagine it ever ending. The only way The Moment might work."

He stared at the former renegade for a moment. "You are the only one I would trust with this power, because I know how much you would hate to keep it."

"Thanks." The Doctor replied dryly. He set aside his hat—a nice fedora he had found in the TARDIS wardrobe—and handed it to his friend. Then , gritting his teeth, he stared into the Time Vortex


	15. all

It wasn't at all like the Untempered Schism. That was a tiny rip, a small gap in Time's elaborate weavings—but the Vortex was a break in the loom, a great gap between a finished garment and the next piece.

He could see all that is, all that was, all that could ever be. And the last category is the greatest, for all the events that were have an accompanying might-have-beens. It's like shifting through all the beaches of the world for a nanocule of white-point star diamond.

For one moment, he saw what he sought. The end of war.


	16. Belated Horror

Rose was frightened enough when he regenerated in front of her, even though the change was for the better—he was gentler, merciful, even happy for a time. But what if she had been at his previous regeneration, eighth to ninth.

That life had begun so lightly, happy and just a tad loopy. But he saw too much for it to last. If Eight ever stood by Nine—if the velvet coat ever met the leather jacket, she would wonder what catastrophe would cause a transformation from naiveté to despair. That alone would frighten her into understanding the Time War.


	17. Lies

_He lies to everyone who asks about it. But he can't lie to himself. The Daleks weren't his real reason for closing the time lock. Nor were the Cybermen, Sontarans, or any nightmare beast. No, he sealed the Time War to protect the universe from them. His own people, the Time Lords, were the greatest threat to the universe. _

_His words from the past proved truer than he realized:_

_"In all my travels through time and space I have battled against evil. Against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here! The oldest civilization: decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core!"_


	18. Hell

Humans use some words too causally. Hell, damn, curse—quite apart from the theological implications (which he doesn't pretend to understand), they have no idea what they're saying. He does.

He's been there before. The war was hell, in every sense of the word. Unending hopelessness, torture and omnipresent death. Even though he'd escaped the lock, it hadn't left him alone. The terrors haunt his mind every moment. Dante's Inferno or Milton's Paradise Lost would be a visit to Florana compared to the Time War. There are no words for such a place, and 'hell' is used far too lightly.


	19. Frightened

He doesn't frighten easily anymore. Since the Time War, he can think of only three times when he was utterly terrified, all self-control ripped away, leaving him a frightened child. Once was with the star, the screaming sun that took over his mind and filled it with pain.

Once was on Midnight, when even his words were stolen and twisted, begging for his own death.

Once was when the Master announced a white-point star had fallen from the heavens

That was his worst nightmare. He, whom monsters had nightmares about, had his own monster. And it was his own people.


	20. Bad DAY

"It was a bad day, bad stuff happened."

Bad day.

For most people, a bad day was hair that wouldn't stay flat, burnt toast, a traffic jam, rotting food, a broken television, a pop quiz in school, overdrawn checks. But it was a long story and he didn't want to go into it now. Bad day—like in that children's book _Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day._

He wonders sometimes if Alexander's bad day had a happy ending. Even if it didn't, that's how it goes sometimes. After all… _some days are like that. Even in Australia. _


	21. ESpace

"Where's Romana? I thought she was president, after all." If there was anyone on Gallifrey he would let inside the TARDIS, it was Romana.

"She never exactly returned from E-space. You seem to be a poor example; after all, you took her on her first trip off-planet."

"Loosened her up, gave her a taste of life, instead of the gilded cage of Gallifrey," He retorted. The counselor's straightjacketed attitude was getting on his nerves. "And in the end, she couldn't put up with you anymore. Good for her. " The Doctor turned away. He'd rather face Daleks then Time Lords.


	22. Worse

He'd heard rumors that the Council was resurrecting the Master for the war. The whole "thirteen regenerations" rule was a legal barring, not a physical restraint, after all. Oh sure, some of the ones who lived that long had gone stark raving mad, blowing themselves up or jumping in black holes, but those tended to be the ones who weren't mentally stable to begin with.

Like the Master. He really, really hoped that was just a rumor, because that was the only way the Time War could be any worse. If he was forced to fight alongside his worst enemy.


	23. Family Plot

He's fighting for so many things. For life, for the universe, for humanity, for his own planet. And for one particular plot of ground: his family's grave. The wife whom he never forgot, the children whose names he never spoke. They died before he could escape—only Susan and he survived.

He can't bear the thought of Daleks rolling over that ground, of Sontarans using it for battle. He, the intergalactic wanderer, with nothing but the TARDIS to call his own, will not surrender the only ground he owns…just enough land to bury them. He fights for the dead too.


	24. Andred

"Doctor?"

"Ah, excuse me, you're—"

"Andred."

"Ah, right. Andred. Ah…"

"I married Leela."

This time the Doctor turns and looks at him. "Ah, right Leela. How is she? And that baby you were going to have?"

"He's great, a wonderfully boy. " Andred looked down for a moment. "Leela died. Just last year. I didn't even think about it when we married, but—"

"Humans," _They break your hearts. _"How old was she?"

"I don't know—I don't think she even knew. She was a warrior to the end, though."

And she missed out on the greatest war ever.


	25. Her

He looks around the Citadel, enjoying one final moment of peace before leaving for the war. TARDISes are everywhere, left in the owner's preferred disguise. There was the Rani's glass pyramid, and the Corsair's space vessel.

Someone is coming towards him from the far side of the hall, weaving through the parked TARDISes to the one stuck as a 1963 police box. A woman, still in her first regeneration, younger than he was when he left Gallifrey so many years ago, walks up to him. "Grandfather? Grandfather, it's me. Susan."

"I said I'd be back—" he hugged her tightly.


	26. Peter Pan

He had been worried about this regeneration since playing Eighth Man Bound as a child, where he saw a great darkness lying after his seventh face. Now he understands why. But the darkness is not merely over him, but over the whole planet.

There is no way to cast off this shadow. Peter Pan may have lost his shadow once, but that was The Boy Who Never Grew Up, not The Doctor Who Never Died. Of all the human stories he'd read, that one stuck with him, because Peter was like him: stuck in between two worlds. Not quite human.


	27. Want

He knew the Time War could kill him. He expected it to.

On some level, he wanted it to. He was tired of running back and forth, of having so many people die under his watch, of life getting thoroughly darker by the day.

It couldn't get much darker than this. The Citadel was burning, up in never-ending flames, as the very air seemed to drain away. He kept volunteering for the most dangerous missions—Skaro's civil war, the fall of Acadia, but he kept escaping. The one time he wanted to die, he couldn't.

The universe won't let him.


	28. Foresight

Staring into the Time Vortex is the easy part. Not looking away is difficult. He can see everything, every moment that ever was and ever will be—not just the broad picture, either. He can see his own future.

Absorbing the TARDIS matrix to save a girl named Rose Tyler…

Entering a radiation chamber to save Wilfred Mott, knowing it might end his life for good.

Every lonely night, every ounce of guilt, packed together like a shipment of lead on his back.

He knows everything that will ever happen to him.

But he still chooses to end the War.


	29. Rain

Rain. Rain always reminds him of Gallifrey, even though it hadn't rained in Gallifrey before the war. The fields were watered by springs and mists; the sky was never cloudy. But as soon as they entered the war, officially breaking their policy of nonintervention, rain poured from the skies.

Children ran into the streets, dancing in the magical water, just like Earth children he had seen so long ago. Adults huddled in clumps, discussing the effects of rain on the ecology and not mentioning their true fear, the irrational fear of omens that didn't make sense.

He had gone walking.


	30. Inferno

He's dreaded fire since his youngest day, and that incident in with the Brig and the parallel universe didn't help at all. Well, that's an understatement. You can swim in water, or escape to the TARDIS in space, but fire devours all. Fire is no respecter of species.

Now Gallifrey burns, red and gold flames meeting the orange sky in a blazing palette of some Van Gogh or Monet, but as horrifying as those works are beautiful. His home planet is burning, not in a nightmare or illusion, but in reality. What can he do in the face of horror?


	31. Uncivil

_an advanced state of human society, in which a high level of culture, science, industry, and government has been reached. _

_those people or nations that have reached such a state. _

_any type of culture, society, etc., of a specific place, time, or group_

Gallifrey was a civilization, he supposed. It was a culture, by most standards, highly advanced. But would a civilized society sit by and watch the world fall to the Daleks? Would it force even its exiles to fight for a cause they'd never believed? Would it ignore the world until it was too late?


	32. Blinded

War has come to Karn. As he stares at the crumbling hoodoos and fallen ledges, the Doctor remembers the last time he visited here with Sarah. They had faced the Brain of Morbius and the creepy scientist who endeavored to restore him. Sarah Jane had been blinded by gas, but she'd still come to find him, stumbling across the rocky paths.

He now had a hint of how terrifying that must have been. Although he could still see, the scope of this struggle left him blind, fumbling and colliding with the infinite walls of time and space, an endless loop.


	33. Little Boxes

"The little boxes will make you angry," Idris had said. For one moment, it threw him back to the final moments of the Time War, his mind full with other people's screams. The little boxes had been there too, the last gasp of a dying civilization.

He sometimes wondered what had happened to them-always presumed they were trapped when the lock closed. Otherwise, he'd be chased by them forever, a stream of messenger cubes knocking on the TARDIS doors all hours of the day and night. For some reason, the thought made him smile. But only for a moment.


	34. Jenga

In the game Jenga, one builds a tower using layers of thin, long bricks. Three face one way; the next three are perpendicular to the original layer. Players take turns trying to make the tower taller by sliding loose bricks from the bottom layers and adding them to the top. As the bottom grows more unstable, each new move becomes risker. The game ends when someone pulls out the pivotal brick and the tower collapses.

The Time War was like that. Each side tried to change weak points in history to their advantage. But eventually, time couldn't take it anymore.


	35. Dinner

He was turning away from the survivors when he heard a question no one had asked him for a long time. "Have you eaten yet?"

The woman, a long grey braid dangling down her back, had seen her grandchildren die before he vanquished the Sontaran fleet. He tried to escape to the TARDIS, but she stepped in front of him. "When did you last eat, Doctor?"

He shrugged.

"Then come in. I have plenty of food, and you deserve a feast."

"But the war—"

"You have a time machine," she pointed out. "It will still be there after dinner."


	36. Definate Article

Sometimes he calls it "a war," as if it were any other war.

Sometimes he calls it "the war," distinguishing it from other, petty, disputes.

Sometimes he calls it "the War," said with an audible capital letter, a proper noun.

Sometimes he calls it "war," an abstract made into a concrete substance, unique, as children speak of Mum or Dad or home.

The definite and indefinite articles, the slight distinction used to play games with himself, to convince himself that it was smaller than he remembers it. But each article merely underlines the headline proclaiming his deeds and the darkness .


	37. most feared

"The most feared being in the cosmos," You run your fingers over the smooth stone, trying to find a hint, a whisper, of the inhabitant. "What are you? What could you possibly be?"

So many enemies are coming to claim the mighty warrior—Sontarans, Daleks, Cybermen, Judoon, Draconians, Sycorax, Silurians… What could inspire such fear?

Unwillingly, you call up all the memories you normally surpass, the shadow always lurking in the corner of your eyes. So many monsters from the war could fit the definition, could be the most feared being. The Nightmare Child, the Skaro Degradations, the Could-Have-Been King….


	38. perennial

Not even the trees of Gallifrey live as long as Time Lords. One could see three generations of trees die of age in the same regeneration. The only exception he's found is the bristlecone pines of Earth. He tried to grow one near his old home once, but it withered under the heat of the twin suns.

Now every tree on Gallifrey, from the seedling he planted the day before the loop began to the ancient Forest of Remembrance, is burning in the planetary inferno. If only trees could escape the inevitable, even when the ones who planted them cannot.


	39. petty

_The Silmarillion_ fell off a shelf, landing spread-eagled on the floor. The Doctor bent over and picked it up. "Tolkien," he mumbled. "Inventor of a great modern mythology, multiple languages—two almost complete: Quenya and Sindarin"

An explosion rocked the TARDIS. "What sort of man spends over fifty years inventing languages? I fight monsters, save civilizations; and some Englishman's biggest concern is conjugating the perfect tense of the verb 'go.'" He closed his eyes. "Sometimes I wish that pettiness was my biggest worry."

But at least some people could live that life. "There's still a war to fight. _Aure entuluva!"_


	40. Happened

_Everything that happened, might not have happened. Everything that is has a 'might have been,' an alternate path left untrod._

The Doctor is certainly the Last of the Time Lords. He is ancient and alone; if he forgets things from his past, they are lost forever. The things he never learned are lost lore, forgotten hieroglyphics erased by millennia of time.

There are brief moments when he forgets, when he thinks "Baxtriel would be interested in that," or "What would Romana do now?" Then he remembers: loses them again.

But he must not stop to weep.

His enemies never do.


	41. Might Have Been

_Everything that happened, might not have happened. Everything that is has a 'might have been,' an alternate path left untrod._

The Doctor is not the Last of the Time Lords.

The Last Time Lord is a child, a girl still on her first regeneration. She survived because he sent her away in a TARDIS, told her to use the Moment. She ended the war.

Guilt and sorrow overwhelm her. She rarely ventures out of the Vortex, let alone the TARDIS. And the enemies of Earth overrun it, unhindered by the Oncoming Storm's unholy wrath.

This is the Might Have Been.


	42. Completely

_This has to happen, River. No one can help me. _

She'll stay awake at night remembering it, she'll weep over it, she'll go to jail for it, but this is a fixed point; it must happen.

He remembers the destruction of Gallifrey, always weighing on him. The wild hope of the Corsair absolving him before he discovered the truth. He cannot let River bear that weight for the rest her days.

So he says it aloud, with her parents as witnesses." You are forgiven. Always and completely forgiven." If only there was someone to whisper the same words to him.


	43. Matches

Red flames leap from golden wheat into the orange sky. He isn't sure where one color ends and the next begins. It's an Impressionist nightmare, a Van Gogh brought to life. The dry air stings my eyes, but I don't look away.

I started this. Years ago, when I let them believe I was out of fluid for the TARDIS, we met the Daleks. That was the first match. But the spark that truly began this inferno was on Skaro, when I held two wires in my old hands and debated whether I had the right to complete the circuit.


	44. Always

He has always been fighting them, it seems. But he lost his sense of "always," replaced with an awareness of Time as a minefield pitted with black holes. It maybe have _always_ been the case that Bratexial fell on the fields of Comel, but was that the case yesterday? He thinks so, but his ripple proof memory is strained by the War's knotted ball of cause and effect. Even the written word is not immune, leaving stories that change halfway through, and only time-sensitive races realize it. All he can say for sure is that nothing is "forever."

Except change.


	45. Missing Tooth

My brain has a region meant to receive messages from other Time Lords. Just because we were all telepathic doesn't mean we chittered like ants. It was more like tingles from nerves you don't always use.

Now it's like a missing tooth, especially sensitive to heat and cold. Any time someone touches that corner of my mind—wait, minds don't have corners, they're hemispheres or whatever the Greeks dubbed that squashy bit—anytime that corner of my mind is touched, it burns with cold. Head banging and pressing foreheads doesn't hurt as much as the lingering brush of another mind.


	46. Ancient

Every time he names his home planet, someone remarks on his age. But they don't know the half of it. The fishy lady—what was her name, Rosanna ?- came closest when she joked "You should be in a museum—or a mausoleum."

The TARDIS is a mausoleum, where the last of the Time Lords is buried alive. They are both the last of their kind, trapped by time in a world that barely remembers them. If Tut were to unwrap his bandages and walk out of the museum, he would meet a world less altered than the Doctor knows.


	47. Fiefdom

He is the Lord of Time, and that trumps King of France any day; but Time is also a more volatile kingdom. You can't relax for a second, or it shall devour you, destroying all you treasure and hold dear. For all the disorder of the Reign of Terror, at least it could only touch the surface, and all Robespierre's attempts couldn't undo the reign of Louis XIV or obliterate the past. But it seems if you turn your back, planets disappear and history is rewritten. It's a full-time job without pay.

The last Lord of Time is its slave.


	48. Innocence

Innocence never had a place in the TARDIS. When anyone steps in the TARDIS, they lose their right, if not their ability, to believe in a rational universe; to believe that people are basically good. He's spent all his time since the war trying to rebuild an ability to trust others, but naiveté is not the same at all.

Sometimes he can almost convince himself that people are good, that they are full of potential and caring, even if they can be thicker than thick just when he's having a brilliant idea. Maybe humans can be innocent. Time Lords: never.


	49. Dedrogations

They weren't Daleks. It might have been easier for him if they were. He could face Daleks , could fight them with all the hatred of centuries, rage from all the times they'd escaped extermination .But the Skaro Degradations weren't Daleks. They were less, less because they did not threaten civilizations from within metal casing, did not send bolts of power from seemingly harmless whisks, did not speak in that horrible monotone. But they were also more, more because they had emotions, they had expressions, they had fear. They were Davro's rough drafts gone wrong before the perfect war machine.


	50. Exploding

He knows what an exploding TARDIS looks like. There were many TARDISes in the war, all crammed with soldiers. But an exploding TARDIS is like nothing on Earth. It is thousands of times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb, capable of cracking the universe.

Maybe that was one reason the war lasted so long. Time took the power and used it to resurrect countless soldiers. Countless times a TARDIS could explode, only prolonging its agony.

He knows what an exploding TARDIS looks like—a great ball of fire larger than any black hole, large enough to warm a whole planet.


	51. Midnight

You roll over, panting for breath. It's been a long time since you were that terrified. But it had you, had you mind and voice. Only the stewardess's sacrifice saved you from being thrown out the airlock. And you still aren't sure what it is,

You'd heard rumors of something like it before, during the early days of the war: a phantom that stole souls, something that crawled inside people and devoured them from the inside out. No one who survived dared speak of it again. Maybe they weren't exaggerating after all. Perhaps it escaped, dwelling under the Midnight sun.


	52. Reputatation

The Silence thought a Time Lord was a weapon. If they had seen Gallifrey of old, Gallifrey as he chooses to remember it, they never would have stolen Melody. Most Gallifreyans died of old age when their hoarded regenerations ran out. Lords of Time? Most of them never even left the Capitol. Their long robes and elaborate headwear would have been impractical at best; fatal at worse. Why would a Time Lord be a weapon?

Maybe they'd seen the horrifying moment when Rassilon tried to destroy the universe a few Christmases ago. That would be enough to frighten anyone away.


	53. Alternate History

I was once a father and a grandfather.

Are you still a father if your whole world was erased from history, if every moment on that soil never happened? There's Jenny, but were you a father before her? Sometimes I was a father, a grandfather; sometimes the planet had been barren for centuries. I was born the way everyone on Gallifrey was—through an artificial Loom. I was born of a human mother and a Time Lord father. Susan was my granddaughter; Susan was the child of the Other.

I was once a father, a grandfather. Now I'm not sure.


	54. Denial

Listen closely. He's only going to say this once, in a very small voice you can barely hear.

_There was no Time War._

After centuries of running, he gave up on his people. He put an anti-hijack block around the TARDIS, shut down his telepathic receptors, and refuses to follow the slightest trace of his people. After 700 years on the run, about time he severed all ties. He doesn't even think about Romana, stranded in E-space, or the Rani, who seems to be staying away from Earth with her experiments. Even the Master is keeping a low profile now.


	55. Lies for Children

It's easier this way. Easier to say "there was a war" and let human minds fill in the details. Wonderful inventors, humans! Vincent van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci, Ben Franklin, John Milton…such creative folk.

The truth is much more complicated. It generally is. It could have started with them forcing him to regenerate and the subsequent exile. It could have started with the trial by the Valeyard. It could have started with Davros on Skaro. But it wasn't any of those reasons. It was something humans couldn't even understand, something that would be like explaining a cube to a dot.


	56. Alien Geometries

Shh. Listen to me for once, instead of my thief. He thinks he can explain everything with words, empty syllables spat into the air. He's lived too long with humans, the silly apes who think everything can be solved with a simple chat.

Let me show you. _Shapes exploding in a green-red night, four-side triangles and circles with beginning and ends. Stars burn cold, freezing sheets of rolling lava into sixth-dimensional forms…_

You want me to stop? It's too much, you can't take it? But that was just a glimpse of the war, only a bare hint of the reality…


	57. A Proverb

Statistics numb the heart. Thousands die in motor accidents, hundreds of thousands of cancer. Children die hourly of treatable diseases. And that's only on one planet. Humans could never imagine the despair beyond their own solar system. All of time and space die while I slip past pain like a shadow. Not that explanations make it better. Words fall short; they always do.

The worst part isn't the remembering or the retelling; it's the stillness afterwards, waiting for understanding that never comes. It's like lecturing a toddler on nuclear physics.

The more you speak of it, the less you understand.


	58. The Worst Part

The worst part isn't the loneliness; not the mere fact of being alone. He's been alone before; chose to be alone when he left Gallifrey all those lives ago. It's not the silence in his head. It's not the guilt, suffocating as Sisyphus's boulder. It's the inability to find anyone who understands, who truly knows how the blood runs ice in your veins as you destroy your entire planet and the strangeness of your hands afterwards, the years of cruel hindsight and alternate plans. No one else knows what you've been through, no matter how much people pretend to understand.


	59. Broken Lock

He almost forgets.

Sometimes, he almost forgets what is happening, what was happening, what will always happen inside the time lock. Screams torn from dying lungs, strange blood cracked and drying on steel doors, frantic whispers in guarded rooms, and over everything fear of the Lord President fills the air, flavoring military rations and pressing like drums on the brain. Tap-tap, tap-tap. Sometimes, he can almost forget.

But the lock has exploded, spilling the dregs of the war on Earth, England, the Naismith Mansion. Wilf ran in when everyone else fled, witnessing the overflow of Gallifreyan arrogance. He won't forget.


	60. Alternate Universe

Maybe there's another universe where all this never happened, where the Time Lords remained grouchy hermits forever and the Kaled mutants never grew beyond cells under Davros' microscope. The multitude of changes necessary to produce such a time set the odds against it, much less his existence in the same universe. But if it does exist, he wonders what his alternate self is doing. Maybe he's still traveling with Fritz, maybe Donna left with her memories intact. Maybe he isn't the last Time Lord. But maybe he never took the hand of a London clerk and told her to run.


	61. Ulysses

I am Ulysses and the son of Ulysses, a warrior forever seeking a way home after war. But I keep stumbling into adventures that take all my effort to escape alive. Sometimes they have brought me to the very edge of the river Styx, but I keep escaping Hades' grip. I have taunted monsters and lost friends, won battles by shrewdness and lost by compassion. But the war against our foes also destroyed my home, barring my path with the wrath of the gods, if gods there are. If this is the price I pay for bloodshed, so be it.


	62. Aspirin

There's a dead body lying in the TARDIS. Big ears poke out from crew-cut brown hair, and the leather jacket hides his skinny chest.

The dead man moans. "Well, that didn't work. Two bottles of aspirin—that should have done the job."

The air throbs with heat.

"Oh, fine, go ahead and scold me. How many times have you stopped me now? Twenty, fifty?"

_Two hundred thirteen._

"And you haven't figured it out yet? Leave me alone! I knew I was going to die when I volunteered—why should you disappoint me?"

No answer. Half-dead, he's alone in the box.


	63. Last

Silence. All those screams echoing in your head, and then—silence. More than silence, emptiness, as if you're the only being in the universe. But it can't be, it just can't be. You've ran from them for so long, from outcast to Lord President to outcast again.

They can't be gone.

The Rani, the Master, the Corsair—no one responds to your calls. You expected at least one of them to escape. Renegades are good at that. If nothing else, you expected the Master would. He hates you too much to let petty little things like Time Locks stop him.


	64. Guilty

Imagine that everyone you ever known is dead. Your parents, a bit stubborn but concerned nonetheless; your spouse, the only person who ever understood your moods; your children and grandchildren, who always made you feel young; your former best friend, now your bitter enemy; your coworkers and supervisors. You can't visit their graves or share stories with friends—you're the only survivor.

Then imagine this: _you killed them. _It was you or them, and you chose to kill them all. Dying in terrible pain, alone, forsaken by the one person they trusted, unable to ask why or plead for mercy.


	65. Sacrificed

But that isn't the worst part. _They want you to. _ When the gates of Hell spill open, they join you in slamming them shut, because they don't want to inflict the torments they suffer on the living. The Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been-King, the Horde of Travesties and more, all locked away in the deepest pits to keep the universe safe. But the sheep could not be separated from the goats, and the (mostly) innocent suffer with the filthy damned, because they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the world.

For you. Because you are the one who makes things better.


	66. Everyone Would Live

"Your own people, standing tall…the Time Lords, reborn." Mr. Finch's words ooze like honey.

He thinks of Romana, lost in the shifting timestreams. The Master, caught in the fires of the Cruciform. Braxtiel, standing in the burning capital. The chance to be seen as the hero of his people, not their destruction. "I could save everyone." he murmurs involuntarily. Not just the Time Lords, either. He could save Arcadia, erasing the screams that still haunt him on dark nights. Planets caught in the crossfire, blown to pieces and barren wastelands, would continue in peaceful orbi'ts. This once, everyone would live.


	67. Nostalgia

It's better this way, he tells himself when he thinks longingly of Gallifrey, of the twin suns and crimson wheat, the elaborate robes and ostentatious headgear. It's better, now that they're gone. Nothing but pompous, hypocritical relics who'd scold him for interfering in human affairs, then hijack his TARDIS to Skaro or 40th-century Earth without so much as a by-your-leave.

They stood by as civilizations rose and fell, when armies fought for lack of a mediator. Yet they never approved of him, not even when asking for his help against their greatest and oldest enemies. He still gave it, though.


	68. Alone reprise

It still hurts to be a lone, though. And he's always alone, no matter how many others are around. No matter who he invites into the TARDIS, they can't feel the void where his planet once chattered away.

Someone once said that "lonely" and "alone" are two different things: one can be alone without being lonely. But the Doctor knows a different interpretation. Even when he's not lonely—laughing with Rose or teasing Jack—he's still alone. No one knows what he's been through. That unspoken knowledge keeps him far away, watching from a distant place in his old mind.


	69. Time Lords Reborn

He could bring them back this moment, simply by joining Mr. Finch and taking the Skakis Paradigm for his own . No longer would he be the last of his race, survivor of half-forgotten legends and an unknown shadow in the night. Gallifrey would still shine in the heavens, a diamond in Kasterborious.

But from it would come nothing good. Sullen indifference mixed with disdain, perhaps. Or active hostility, encouraging extraterrestrial attentions to delay human space activity. He thinks of the councils he's heard, atrocities condoned to save their own skins. He had reasons for sealing them in the Lock.


	70. Temptation

But it didn't have to be that way. He could use the Paradigm to rewrite all Gallifrey, every Time Lord. They would be bold adventurers, protectors of the weak, seekers of justice. The name of Gallifrey would rest alongside Avalon and Eden as a paradise; children would play at being Time Lords as they did Arthurian knights or American cowboys.

The globe of the Citadel would be home port to a hundred, nay, ten thousand TARDISes, all filling the air with that glorious hum. Any paradoxes would be solved,spirals that never blurred. His name whispered in awe by every tongue.


	71. Redo

There are fixed points in time: he wonders if Skaro was one of them. Did he really have a choice that day he held two wires a hair's-breath apart? What if he had listened to Sarah and destroyed them then, before a single life had ended to the cry of ex-ter-min-ate? If he had the chance, would he make the same choice? Could he still walk away from those wires.

He doesn't think so. Screw fixed points and consequences, screw keeping the timestream clean. He'd do it today, if he was given a redo. He would destroy them all forever.


	72. One More Thing

Just when he thinks he's reached the bottom of his grief, the floor always falls out from under him. The first time he had to tell a companion that he's the only survivor. The first time he came across a Dalek. The first time he regenerates. Anyone who grieves knows this to be true.

But it's not just experiences. It's idle thoughts and old memories. He dreams of looking into the Infinite Schism., only to remember that the field is lost. The oversized furniture of House Lungbarrow, the Rod of Rassilon, his presidential chambers, the guards who exiled him….all gone.


	73. Sunset Splendour

Author's note:

_I thought there would be a grave beauty, a sunset splendour_  
><em>In being the last of one's kind<em>

-"Re-adjustment" by C.S. Lewis

* * *

><p>"I am the last of my species," she repeats, an edge to her voice. Anyone else might mistake the tone for despair.<p>

But he knows better. It's the tone of a desperate liar. "No, you're not." His words echo from far off, strange in his ears. "Because I'm the last of my kind, and I know how that sits in a heart. So don't insult me." Oh, some might think the unrelenting loneliness tinged with a dying beauty. But there is nothing glorious about isolation, nothing heroic about surviving when all the bravest have died and you survived by luck.


	74. Historic Sites

At least with normal wars, there are memorials. Even if the memorial is nothing more than an empty field of wheat or a mass grave, people may come and stand in silence, implying "We remember you. You are important." Stories are passed down, reenacted and dramatized for the next generation. Some nations even establish organizations to maintain these sites, to put up plaques and hire guides to relate these tales. Even lost things may be found, centuries after their nations fell.

But there's nothing like that for him. Even time travel can't take him to the grave of his people.


	75. Laconic

"Everyone died," isn't much of an explanation for anyone, let alone a journalist, but in the joy of seeing her again, it was all he could say. It was hard enough to tell Rose, who know nothing of other Time Lords, but Sarah Jane had heard of Gallifrey. She had been there, whether she remembered it or not.

Her journalistic instincts would kick in, and she'd have questions. He'd give in eventually. There'd be some questions he could answer easily enough, but eventually he'd have to tell her what he did. Why he did it. How would she respond then?


	76. If He Told Her

She'd be very quiet for a moment. A very painful moment, when neither of them could look at each other. But finally she'd say "No other way?"

He'd nod, unable to speak.

"And you regenerated?" she'd ask.

He'd nod again.

"Was anyone with you?"

He'd close his eyes, shake his head.

She'd look up then, slipping her hand through his fingers. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry you were alone. I wish I could have been—I'm sorry."

He'd look up seeing neither blame nor pity in her eyes. _We are still friends. That won't change, regardless of what you did then._


	77. Never Will Be

_In the Doctor Who novel Way through the Woods, this alien accepts the Doctor's offer of a lift home. Except it's been hundreds and hundreds of years since he left to fight in a war. He's become a legend and people have always hoped he'd return…_

* * *

><p>The Doctor turned away as the cheering crowds engulfed Reyn.<p>

"So, the stuff of legends?" Rory asked.

"Oh, legends are simple enough things to start. Just a few words in the right ears … your turn this time, Pond," he pulls a pen from his jacket. "Something about the long-lost warrior emerging from a blue box with a brilliant young man in a bowtie…"

"Oye, watch it." Amy snapped.

If he closes his eyes for a moment, he can imagine that he is Reyn—or that Reyn is him, returning to Gallifrey, to a hero's welcome after returning from war.


	78. Causal

"Grandfather, what are you doing here?"

He twirls the umbrella. "Oh, just a causal visit, stopped by to shoot the breeze. Been a long time, hasn't it?"

"Fifty years," she pushes back a black strand, untouched by grey. "And for you?"

"Oh, traveling here and there, you know how it is. Lost track of time. Met some new friends, maybe I'll introduce you sometime."

"In that old thing? Didn't you repair the chameleon circuit? It's a bit conspicuous here, you know."

He shrugs. "It's grown on me."

Susan glances into his eyes. "New regeneration, then? Came out looking pretty dapper."


	79. Reminscing

"Something's wrong, Grandfather. What aren't you telling me?"

"Telling you? Why should I tell you anything? It has nothing to do with you," he lowered his voice. "At least, I don't think it should."

"I'm a grown woman—tell me."

"But your family—"

"David died seven years ago. The children are grown and married."

"Are they now? How many?"

"Three." Susan blushes. "Ian, Barbara, and John. After David's father."

"So, Earth names then. Very proper, considering the setting

""I gave them Gallifreyan names too. But they belong here, this is their home. They think Time Lords are just stories."


	80. Why He Came

They sat in her house, sipping cups of tea in cracked brown cups. "It's not really tea, of course. Some people have tried cultivating it in their gardens, but it won't grow—too wet, I suppose."

"Not bad, though."

"No. Now, why are you really here?" Susan crosses her arms. "I can tell you're lying."

He doesn't look up. "A war's beginning, Susan. A temporal-escalation between Gallifrey and Skaro."

"When did the Daleks achieve time travel?"

"A long story, but the High Council has summoned every emigrant Time Lord."

"Including you?"

"And you. That's why I'm here."

"I'm going home?"


	81. Prediction

"No."

"No?"

"I've encountered the Daleks over and over again. I've seen them grow in hatred and strength. I know what this war will be like. And I don't want you to be a part of it."

"But they must be stopped. There were still some left, at the beginning—we had to fight—I'm not scared of them."

"This won't be just a few skirmishes. And at the end, one name—or two-will be erased from history."

"Two?"

"Both sides could lose. Even if we destroy them, where will that leave us? Mighty warriors, feared by lesser races?"


	82. Draft Dodger

Outside, they hear the hum of a TARDIS landing.

_(this is where time splinters)_

"Run!" The Doctor orders. "Hide somewhere, anywhere. I'll draw them off. I'll tell them you died, you left, anything—"

Susan opens her mouth, closes it. There's terror in his eyes, but only for her.

"I'm the bigger prize, anyway. GO!"

She runs out the back door, jumping over the vegetable beds. Is her autron energy, half a century old, strong enough to draw them? She ducks into a deserted Tube station, clattering down the stairs.

"Doctor," Maxil announces. "You have been summoned to war."


	83. Farewell

_(this is another splintering)_

She takes his cup, sets it in the sink and runs a rag over it. "No sense leaving dirty dishes."

"You're coming with me, then."

"Not without leaving a note." Susan dries her hands, pulls out a sheet of paper, an inkbottle and quill, setting them on the table. "Barbara, Ian and John, my grandfather stopped by and offered me a ride home. I'm not sure when I'll be back, so weed the potatoes and keep the entryway swept. Love, Mother." The final n curled off in a Gallifreyan hieroglyph that meant _promises for all times._


	84. Skaro

When he landed on Skaro, he expected to find a barren, grey planet- rather like a granite quarry, in fact. He'd landed on enough of them in earlier regenerations to recognize one hog-tied and blindfolded. Land on ten planets, and eight of them would resemble a Colchester quarry, no doubt about it.

Instead, the first sight of Skaro took his breath away. Crimson sunlight overhead, wrapping the ruins in a blanket of warmth. _Gallifrey._ The word slips into his mind before he can reason past it. Ruins under a red sky; the relics of a great civilization left to rot.


	85. Prove Me Wrong

He thought Skaro had been destroyed. He was certain of it, even if the date was a matter of some confusion.

But then again, he thought the Daleks had been destroyed too. Maybe he should just stop being sure of anything. The universe seems determined to prove him wrong in unpleasant ways. He thought he'd finally gotten out of running errands for Time Lords—only to be sent on one for _Daleks._ He thought he'd finally given someone a happy ending—only to find Amy and Rory on the brink of divorce. He thought he'd found a new friend there.


	86. Xenophobia

He's never felt sorry for a Dalek. From their first encounter on Skaro to the Cabinet War Rooms, they became a menace, an ineradicable foe.

_They survive. They always survive, while I lose everything._

No emotions except hatred, sparking anger that he tries to push away. The anger of a good man is something to fear, even when one's not on the receiving end. Perhaps that's why he has so many titles in their culture—the Oncoming Storm, the Bringer of Darkness, the Predator. And he has his own nicknames for them in return—pepper pots, rubbish bins, other insults.


	87. Rage

He's never felt rage like this before. It's the fire of regeneration with the frozen chill of death, their long history crystalized in one moment with the two of them eye-to-eye. The only comfort he'd had in those last moments of clarity before sealing the lock was the knowledge that no one else would have to stare into that eyestalk again. "Let me out of here, let me out!"

No. He was trapped. And so was it.

Fear sharpens to disgust. One survivor, waiting for orders. "Ten million ships on fire…I watched it happened! I MADE it happen," he screams.


	88. Eggs

Spoilers for Asylum of the Daleks

* * *

><p>He won't be able to look at milk or eggs for a very long time, and soufflés just aren't cool anymore. Not since he met someone who challenged his conception of Daleks.<p>

Someone, not something, because Oswin Oswald will always be a person to him, not the horrible, screaming white-shelled Dalek he met. A genius who hacked into their software and saved his life, not an elaborate trap at the heart of the asylum. The girl who played Carmen to drown out the sound of berserk war machines. He wonders if any of the others he's killed were like her.


	89. Return

He hasn't set foot on Earth for a very, very long time.

Nine hundred twenty-two years, seven months, two weeks, five days, six hours, and eleven minutes, to be exact. It's taken him that long to return to his adopted planet, because he doesn't want to risk running into someone who would recognize him. Even with this new face, a slip of the tongue, a quirk of taste could betray him. He didn't even go to England the first time, let alone London. Peru seemed like the ticket.

He stepped out of the box as if the ground would crumble.


	90. Not Me

He's never been to Earth. He's never parked the TARDIS in a junkyard, never met a journalist named Sarah Jane Smith, never worked for UNIT. Perhaps another man did those things, a man he might have passed on the street once. But it wasn't him. He didn't meet the creator of the Daleks, fight Zygons, or visit Peladon. Someone else did.

He is the Doctor, traveling the universe in a Type 40 TARDIS inexplicably stuck in the form of a British police box, circa 1960. He travels alone, the sole survivor of a mighty war. He has always been alone.


	91. Memories

Someone once told me you don't die until everyone that you knew is dead. Think of all the people I'm keeping alive, eh?

-Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones

* * *

><p>All that's left is the memories. No wind moaning over lonely graves, no bloodstained clothing or hospital forms. Romana, Rani, Flavia. K'anpo Rimpoche, Darkel and more only exist as a face, a word, a flash of color in his mind. Forget them, and they will be lost forever.<p>

_If something's remembered, it can come back._

This is all the life they have now. He hopes they enjoy it, dwelling in dust corridors and fighting vanquished monsters. Sometimes they appear in his dreams, when he wishes hard enough and the TARDIS is kind. They wait for oblivion and the final death.


	92. Death

Why do humans take such pleasure in personifying death? From Anubis the jackel-headed to gloomy Hades and the Morrigan, nearly every civilization has a deity of the dead. Some are more respectable than others—medieval skeletons have decayed to Halloween costumes, while modern writers prefer a Death who speaks in all capital letters or has no pupils in his eyes.

His people are no different. The trinity of Gallifrey is Pain, Death, and Time, but Death, though the middle child, has been the most famous of the three. She is nothing like the Deaths humans imagine, and yet embodies all.

* * *

><p>No disrespect to Gaiman and Prachett<p> 


	93. Armor

He hid inside a Dalek once. The thought disgusts him now. No matter how desperate the situation, no matter what the odds, he would not stoop to disguise himself as his worst enemy. The armor of hate and rage would not shield the last Time Lord.

The armor, not the Dalek, was what men feared. Remove the Dalek from the metal shell, and it was no more than a stranded jellyfish, a limp sponge. But after centuries, no one could distinguish between the creature and its weapon. The tank had absorbed what remained of life and left only a machine.


	94. Doesn't Like Guns

That's why he never carries a gun. People stop thinking when they carry guns, forget the marvels of a 1300-1500 gm. brain and focus on shotguns and bazookas. And the longer they carry it, the more natural it feels; it becomes a part of them, until they cannot bear to put it down. He's seen it happen before, brilliant people, wonderful people, who become nothing more than weapons.

He doesn't want to be known for a weapon. He doesn't want to become one. So he carries a sonic screwdriver and physic paper, because they force him to recognize his actions.


	95. Collateral Damage

"Mama, what's happening?" the girl gasps. "Please, explain." Screams fill the air, punctuated with the zap of death rays.

The woman doesn't look back. "We can't stop. If we do—" her voice pitches up; she bites her lip. "We can't."

The girl glances over her shoulder. The metal things are closer now, only a few houses behind them. "Mama—"

"Run! I'm right behind you."

They duck behind trees and over heaps of rubble, trying gain time.

"Halt! You will o-bey."

The woman stops, placing her hands in the air. "If I do, will you let the child go?"


	96. Children Cry

_You couldn't just stand there and watch children cry._

He never has been able to ignore children in pain. He never will.

It was supposed to be a simple meeting at a museum to gather information about the Daleks. But one was already there, disguised as a relic. It only had enough for one shot, and it chose him.

And then that child ran in front of him. She was just trying to get away, but she got too close. He can still remember her frazzled pigtails, the shocked expression on her pale face.

That's why he agreed to fight.

* * *

><p>Sparked by summery of "Museum Piece"<p> 


	97. Homeric Similes

A horde of Daleks, innumerable fleets of war vessels, fills the sky and blots out the stars. The night is copper with the flanks of their ships; the air filled with fumes. He could take out a hundred ships a second, but the falling debris would only shield the others from ground-based weapons.

The Doctor adjusts his velvet jacket. The fabric absorbs the gleaming light, creating a silhouette as the ships descend. He thinks of Hector on the walls of Troy, Americans filling the Alamo, Roland against the Sacrens, old tales. People chose heroes because the odds are against them.


	98. Unchallenged

That's it, then. The War is truly, really, over forever. It takes two sides to fight a war, and they no longer remember him. That's good, right?

But what will happen the next time they meet, when he has to stop them from killing innocent people? They will not know why he hunts them down, why he must destroy them over and over. And how can he live with himself, when there is no one to accuse him of cruelty? When no one can challenge his actions in the War, will he still be able to justify the choices made?


	99. Night Terrors

He doesn't dream anymore. Time Lords don't need as much sleep as humans to begin with—a highly efficient metabolism, you see—and their heightened mental capacities enable them to manipulate involuntary processes. Just as the respiratory bypass allows him to survive in oxygen-poor environments, he has altered his delta wave patterns to eliminate REM sleep from the cycle.

The first decade after the War, he woke up screaming every day. He had used dreams to analyze and determine what course of action would break the stalemate and end it. Even his nights were sacrificed to end the Dalek scourge.


	100. Fin

He stares at the ruins of Arcadia, unblinking. If this is his last sight, let him meet death with eyes wide open.

"The Moment! The Moment!"

He pulls the final safeguard away, leaving only a hairs-breadth between his fingers and the button.

"Doctor, you cannot do this. I forbid it!" Rassilon screams.

His gaze flickers to the pile of corpses. An elderly woman, her long grey braid covered with ash, holds a small hand in her own.

"No. This ends." He presses-_did press will press is always pressing—_the button.

The woman looks him in the eye. **Thank you.**


End file.
